AT&T Mobile App Hackathon - Education Hackathon Recap (Palo Alto)

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So this last weekend we had a very special hackathon that was focused on education and produced in partnership with AT&T's very own Aspire program, which is focused on reducing high school drop out rates. The event was kicked off by Beth Shiroshi, VP of AT&T Aspire, Lucien Vattel, founder and executive director of GameDesk, and Banny Banerjee, Associate Professor at Stanford. In addition to the big names at the event, AT&T anncounced earlier this year a relaunch of the Aspire program with a quarter billion commitment specifically to education. Through some excellent internal connections, we were introduced to the Aspire group and the rest is history. Moving forward, AT&T Mobile App Hackathon will deliver at least four hackathons focused on education for AT&T Aspire, so be looking for more exciting events! 

With the awesome turn out of over 200 developers, teachers and students this last weekend in Palo Alto, we are very excited for future events. By my watch, I believe the 30 pizzas were inhaled in under 30 minutes as well as the entire fridge of drinks which totalled over 250 bottles. I have to say that this is a great problem to have and we'll have to budget more for food and possibly get a better head count. We have been toying with the idea of a five dollar speed bump just to make sure that developers are serious about coming and so that we can get a better count for food. The funds would go into a new prize called "audience choice" where the "bucket-o-cash" would go to the team that the audience chooses as their favorite team/idea/pitch. Let me know your thoughts on this: @alex_donn.

I really wish I could have stayed for the final presentations, but I had to catch an early flight out to Israel to run the next hackathon and I am currently at the Sheraton Tel-Aviv writing up this event review. The crazy part is that it is 05:45AM here and I am still awake after being up for the last 36 hours with only four or five hours of sleep. Hm. I wonder how much longer I can keep this up? Anyone into body hacking?

As for the education hackathon there were 32 teams that presented an excellent array of applications with the first place team being a stand-out application as described by other attendees I spoke with after the event. The overall winning team was a combination of teachers and developers, which is what we were really looking to achieve. 

The prize selection weighed in significantly as well with $60k in AT&T Aspire donations to non-profits and $10k in cash prizes for the top teams. Apigee, Tiggzi, Amazon, AT&T Cloud, AT&T API and Pearson also kicked in a significant amount of prizes.

Without further delay, here is the list of winners:

Best Overall Education App:

1. Read With Me - Read with me is a web app that replaces cumbersome and time consuming methods for assessing reading fluency in classrooms through the use of a digital, paired-device solution that allows for real-time, meaningful analysis of reading fluency scores.  The scores can be saved, recorded, graphed, and shared with other educators and parents.
2. Hiword - An application that uses an innovative method to assist users in remembering foreign language.
3. Dropout Doctor - An app that is focused on showing kids that are considering dropping out the result of their choices both statistically and visually.

Top 2 Student Apps:

1. Graphyl
2. Grade Tracker

Best App using AT&T APIs:
1. BeInvolved.in

Best App using AT&T Cloud Architect:
1. Drop Out Doctor

Best App using Apigee Usergrid:
1. Graphyl

Best App using Medio Systems Analytics:
1. Drop Out Doctor

Best App using Pearson:
1. Read with me
2. Radioactive

Best App using Tiggzi:
1. BeInvolved.in
2. Graphyl
3. Studen

Best App using AWS:
1. ATTHACKGAME